


The Calm Before the Storm or After

by Wijiic



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:27:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24876934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wijiic/pseuds/Wijiic
Summary: In which a slave attempts to adjust to an abrupt change of circumstance.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	The Calm Before the Storm or After

He washed his face and then considered his reflection in the bathroom mirror as he lifted his head, hair around his temples damp, droplets of water dripping from his chin. It was strange the way his own face caught him by surprise. How it was entirely and exactly the same, even though everything else was different.

_As if what? Freedom was supposed to give you some glowing halo? Change your hair? The cut of your nose? Don’t be an idiot._

_Focus, Phillip._

He reached for a hand towel, hiding his face. No. Blotting it dry. He replaced the towel, stepped out of the bathroom and kept his eyes carefully away from the mirror.

The apartment was the same, too. He knew every inch of it, forward and back. He was the primary reason it looked the way it did, after all. He’d chosen the furniture, purchased the bedsheets and towels and toiletries, organized the books and decided on the artwork that hung from the walls. But all of that had been for John, because of John, ordered by John. And now there wasn’t any John, there was only Phillip. In here, alone. _Free_.

How would the space have been different, if he had been buying furniture for himself? It was his, now. (He was his, now.) He could change anything he wanted. His stomach did the sort’ve clenching thing it liked to do, in that instant between the moment Phillip realized he’d fucked up and the moment John realized Phillip had fucked up. He exhaled slowly, carefully, through his nose. He _could_ change anything he wanted. He could change nothing at all, if he wanted. The tightness relented, and Phillip stood careful and still until he was entirely certain the roiling in his belly was just a bluff. Then he walked over to the couch, sat down, draped his arms across the back and tilted his head until he was looking at the lights in the ceiling.

This was how John would sit, after one of the long, relentless days that wore him down. He would close his eyes, and when Phillip stepped into the room, he’d ask for a scotch. Phillip always knew the drink, it never changed, but he also knew John liked the little ritual of asking. Well, ordering, even though he never phrased it like an order. But, that was implicit. John did not believe in blurring lines.

So, John would say, _God, I’d love a scotch_ and Phillip would walk over to the decanter and pour it into the lowball glass (Neat. Two fingers.) and bring it over to where John would already have his hand out, because that was easier than lifting his head and opening his eyes.

Phillip’s eyes were open, now. The lights in the ceiling were bright and they made him squint a little, but looking at them felt better than not. He never would have sprawled out like this, before. Exposed belly, exposed crotch, exposed throat, eyes not on any of the doorways. Not that John was the sort to take advantage of any of that, but he’d lived in other households besides John’s, and old habits.

The alarm on his watch beeped softly. Five thirty. Time to start sorting dinner. Or it would have been, before. His skin jumped as he remained resolutely on the couch and his watch’s alarm bip-bipped at him. A tiny, innocuous sound that seemed increasingly loud as it ran through its fifteen seconds and then stopped. In the subsequent silence, Phillip could hear himself swallow.

Maybe he could nap (in which bed?) or get Chinese delivered ( _So much grease, Phillip, that’s hardly healthy fare_ ). If it was five-thirty, he’d been a free man for exactly four hours.

John had died two days before, heart attack, just here and then not here. Phillip had thought heart attacks involved odd tingling down the arm and chest pain, that it was a somewhat drawn out and anguished thing, and if one was astute and observant, one could have the ambulance rushing the patient to the hospital before things became truly dangerous. But it turns out, sometimes heart attacks are like anything else, and they rage on through in a heartbeat (heh) and leave everything changed in their wake. John had been in the office, making a call. And then he had slumped in his chair, and it was Phillip making a call, and although the ambulance arrived promptly, John was already dead.

Phillip had stayed in a room in a center until the reading of the will. John had never discussed his will. He had some thirty years on Phillip, who would be turning thirty this year (thirty. God. It all started to go downhill once you reached thirty), but somehow John had seemed… not ageless. Not that. Just _constant_. It really hadn’t occurred to Phillip that his master could up and die, just like that. As if death would wait for permission, like he did. _Idiot._

Late this morning, someone had come for him at the center. An attaché or secretary or… someone tied to the lawyer who was the will’s executor. Phillip had been driven to one of the offices in one of the highrises downtown. He’d been walked into a conference room, and he was glad he’d had the forethought to grab a suit when they’d grabbed him for the center. Sitting in a room like this, in a building like this, dressed in slacks and a polo? Unforgivable.

John’s daughter was there, dressed in black, calm and quietly poised. They had never met, but Phillip had seen pictures. He was the one who bought her birthday cards and then reminded John to sign them and then mailed them every June. She was lovely: a pale, delicate woman with dark hair and big doe eyes that looked red, even if the rest of her was impeccable. Seated beside her was, well, Phillip wasn’t sure, someone attached to her. He was also dressed in black, in a suit more expensive than Phillip’s, and his hand lifted every now and again as if he wanted to pull at his tie and then remembered he shouldn’t. His hair was in that shaggy, mussed style that was supposed to be chic now, and which Phillip could never have pulled off even if he’d wanted to (he did not) because he and his hair hated each other.

(Jesus, he could cut his hair, now.)

Anyway, the boy with John’s daughter. She was still because stillness was who she was. He was still because he was trying not to move, and he had a sort of frenetic, persistent energy that made Phillip a little nervous (not that it showed). He touched her, little, tiny touches. A brush of fingertips on her elbow. His hand over hers. His knee against hers. Offering comfort. Seeking comfort. At first, Phillip thought maybe he was a slave, too, but then the executor began reading off the names of everyone in attendance, and he was a free man. With a ridiculous name, as it happened. Clearly invented. Did he think nobody else could speak Italian?

He read John’s daughter’s name, then Phillip’s (property of…). She glanced in his direction and offered a small nod. He lowered his gaze to the table and dipped his head respectfully, because that was what one did in the presence of superiors, even when they were six years your junior and you’d never met, before. Power dynamics were a language of their own, another in which he was fluent.

The executor began reading the opening bit, the part that basically said in parsed down legalese that the following was John’s wishes and he’d been sane when he’d decided on them, so whether you liked it or not, this was how the chips were going to fall.

Phillip listened and looked politely attentive and kept his hands below the table where he could lace them hard without his white knuckles being visible.

_You would have remembered me, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t have just left them to sort where I was going to go next. I counted for that much, to you._

_Didn’t I?_

He wondered if it would be his daughter. That seemed most likely, though it wouldn’t last very long. But she was honorable. John had raised her, after a fashion (well, boarding schools had raised her, but John had chosen them), and Phillip thought she’d try with him a little while. And when she realized it wouldn’t work, she’d do her due diligence and place him with someone reputable. Or, at least, an auction house with a good reputation. God, he hoped.

“…to Phillip I leave his writ, the New York apartment and the sum of…”

And that was it. A single sentence, the signing and filing of a paper, and he went from property to person. The simplicity of it was disgusting. They stood, nodded, and parted ways. Or, rather, Phillip parted ways and left the executor and John’s daughter to discuss the details of her ownership of his houses (including the chateau in Nice and the villa in Tuscany) and her partnership in John’s business and her ownership of John’s other business. That meant they’d be speaking again soon, as she’d need Phillip to fill in the gaps and perhaps coach her in what to say to the other partners. Unless she just wanted to sell her shares, he supposed.

He spent the ride back to the apartment (he had no money of course (not ‘of course’, anymore), but the receptionist downstairs had arranged for a car on the executor’s instructions) trying to understand what it meant. Was this affection? Approval? Dismissal?

_Did you think I’d go back to the way I was when you found me? All limbs and bruises and insubordination? Did you want me to know that I’d done well? Did you want me to know I hadn’t done well enough?_

In some ways, he had understood John very well. In others, the man had been opaque as heavy snow on glass. Phillip was an expert at observation and deduction, but John was an expert at Phillip, and in the end, the things Phillip knew about John were the things he had been permitted to know. And now, those were all the things about John that he would ever know.

The car stopped in front of the towering apartment complex, and Phillip thanked the driver and went inside and walked to the elevator, same as usual (except he’d been two days without a shower or a shave, they always forgot about you a bit in holding). He entered the elevator and removed the keycard from his pocket, tapping it to the control panel so he could access the top floor. Penthouse. (As if John would suffer anything less.) Same as usual. The elevator opened, he stepped inside, and the apartment was just the same as usual. Sometimes John had meetings. Sometimes he simply went out. Phillip had spent countless hours alone in this space. But there was a weight to it, now. A heaviness to the absence in the knowledge that it was permanent.

So Phillip had showered and shaved and washed his face and come into the living room and now here he was, on the couch, sitting like John sits. Used to sit. Sat. As if filling the space in the same way John had could… what? Fill _him_ with something, Phillip supposed. That particular, ineffable thing that John had had. That everyone has, if they’re free. The way to walk into a room without the immediate urge to case it, determine who was there and what level of propriety was necessary to put everyone at ease (enough that nobody felt you were uppity, not too much that anybody felt _too_ reminded of the power disparity. That would be uncomfortable. Discomfort was bad for business.) The way to stop looking for an owner who was no longer there (when he was home, Phillip’s gaze would check, every minute or so, where he was, what he was doing, what he needed. When he was gone, every fifteen minutes or so Phillip would recall where he had gone, when he would be back, what needed to be done in the meantime). The way to feel… different. Whole. Like a finished piece rather than something half sculpted and still trapped in stone.

Maybe all it would take was time.

_Injury is no excuse for idleness. There’s always something that can be done._

He couldn’t bank on “time”. He knew how to be proactive. So, he was going to make a plan and he was going to carry it out. And if that failed, he would consider why, make another plan and carry that out. He had a home. He had money. He had everything he needed while he fumbled.

_But, no John._

Did he need John?

Did he _miss_ John?

Was it fucked up that he didn’t know?

The light hurt and his cheeks were damp and his arms were a little bit asleep, stretched out like this. Phillip sat up, scrubbed at his face and ignored whatever popped low in his back for the movement (fucking thirty).

The future suddenly and abruptly gaped wide as if it wanted to swallow him whole, and the weight of all that time and uncertainly pressed him down like a knee on his chest. There wasn’t air, he couldn’t breathe, and the tiny, removed bit of himself that watched as the rest of him gripped at the arm of the couch and gawped like a caught fish, thought _God, how long has it been since_ this _happened?_

The first time had been not very long after John bought him, and at first they thought it was asthma. But when the inhaler didn’t help, the doctor decided it was panic, which was wretched. Asthma was a physical weakness, which Phillip considered tolerable, but panic was humiliating. He had never, in any of the prior households, had anything like this, but apparently once his brain was beginning to wrap around the idea that he might be safe, his body decided it was going to turn him into a breathless, gasping imbecile because John asked _have you ever used Quickbooks, before?_

_I’m going to die like this_ , Phillip thought as the edges went dark and hazy and his clothes rasped against his skin as if they’d turned to sandpaper. _I’m going to die because I’m here, alone, and there’s nobody to call an ambulance_.

But he hadn’t died, had he. Not the first time or the second or the third. He’d been on the floor, on his knees (so many kneeling jokes, how to pick just one) and then John had been on the floor beside him, his broad hand spanning across the back of Phillip’s neck, his thumb feeling his pulse pounding in the left carotid artery and his longest finger feeling it pound in the right. _Breathe, Phillip_ , he had said almost (but not quite) gently. _Focus. You don’t need to pay attention to everything at once. Just think about the first step._ And he had, because even in the beginning, he’d always tried to do what John told him.

Well.

Mostly.

_The first step is to decide on what I want for dinner._

_Good. You’re doing well._

_Chinese. I’ll have Chinese, because fuck it, and fuck you._

The vice grip on his lungs eased a little.

_Now, what’s the next step?_

_I go to the phone and I dial, and when someone picks up, I give them my order and the address._

_You can do that, can’t you?_

_Yes, I can do that._

Air flooded into his throat and he sucked it down greedily, closing his eyes as the dizziness eased back and he became aware of the way the fibers of the couch were digging under his fingernails. He released his grip and smoothed his hand across the spot until it looked normal, again.

When he had been on his knees, he had stared at them, not wanting to look up. Not wanting to see whatever expression John’s face had while it observed him. John’s hand had moved away, offered an awkward pat on Phillip’s shoulder, and he’d stood and walked to the other side of the office before he spoke. There was nothing John needed on the other side of the office except an excuse to turn his back and allow Phillip a moment of privacy while he regained his composure and then his footing. _I know it’s trite, the saying about how all journeys begin with a single step, and I know you already grasp the importance of seeing the bigger picture before planning for even a smaller goal, but it is permissible to look down at one’s feet, every so often, when the road becomes too long to see clearly. If you cannot walk forward, it doesn’t matter what the path looks like._

_That metaphor,_ Phillip had offered when he could both speak and sound like himself, _became terribly convoluted._

_Well, I’m afraid poetic prose has never been a forté. You’re recovered?_

_Yes._

_Then show me your spreadsheet._

Phillip stood up from the couch and walked to the phone. Even in the era of smartphones and tablets, John had insisted on a land line.

He picked up the receiver. He dialed. He took the next step.


End file.
